As aircraft become more sophisticated, there is an ever increasing need for computational processing power in complex hardware systems. In order to meet the computational processing power need, new generations of faster processors are generally used. The faster processors permit significant increases in integration and complexity of the complex hardware systems compared to previous generations of processors. Determining a set of optimized processors (quantities and capabilities) to meet growing computing needs within a real-time context of a complex hardware system can be a very difficult problem. Previously, engineers would start by selecting a particular kind of processor, and then proceed to estimate a number of instances of the processor required. The estimate of the number of instances would require meeting computational requirements with assumed margins for schedule-ability given manual assessment of application needs for redundancy, separation, I/O and other resources. Such a process of examining an adequacy of the selected processors is a time consuming process which may still result in an inadequate margin of resources or number of processors. Uncertainty in selection of processors can be a source of considerable uncertainty in complex hardware system development efforts.